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Month: July 2013

The premise of this blog post is simple. News happens, and I react to it. I think we can manage that, right? Let’s get to it.

Fox delayed the season premiere of Glee by a week to accommodate for the tragedy of Corey Monteith’s death. The first two episodes of the season will pay homage to the Beatles, and the third will pay homage to Monteith.

So far, so good. Glee has been placed in an impossible position with the death of one of its biggest and most likable stars. Finn is too important a character to simply be written off as if he had never existed, but the untimely nature of Monteith’s passing makes the issue all the more sensitive. No matter what the Glee writers do, someone is going to have a problem with it, but I think they’ve done as well as they can given the circumstances. Creator Ryan Murphy’s interviews last weekend implied that Lea Michele (Monteith’s girlfriend in real life, and Finn’s on the show) has encouraged the continuation of the series and wants to pay tribute to Monteith on the show. The challenge now is to find a way to pay tribute to Monteith without forcing the cast to tackle a difficult subject in a way that they don’t feel comfortable. I hope Monteith gets an appropriate send-off.

Falling Skies aired its 28th episode last night, and it had something that the previous 27 episodes lacked: Noah Wyle’s clean-shaven face.

Oh, and the element of surprise. You can judge which one is more important.

In all seriousness, “Strange Brew” (the eighth episode of the show’s third season) struck me for its willingness to try something different on a show that has remained stubbornly entrenched in neutral gear for its herky-jerky run so far. Unfortunately, the episode fails to deliver on the promise of its ambition, but the presence of that ambition gives me some hope that the Falling Skies writers are working to break out of the reductive storytelling pattern they’ve confined themselves to since the popular TNT series began in 2011.

I was slogging through the awful third episode of CBS’ hit summer series Under the Dome when I decided to liven up my unpleasant viewing experience. I pulled up a Word doc and took notes every time I heard an unintentionally amusing piece of dialogue. The doc quickly grew in length, and I came to realize one of my biggest problems with this disappointing series. The characters aren’t real people! I don’t believe that real-life versions of the people in this story would say the things the writers are making them say.

I understand I’m not watching a documentary. But I am watching a show that purports to take something people in real life have experienced (small-town life) and place it in an unusual fantasy context. And yet, the people on the show are as unbelievable as the sci-fi conceit. I can’t emotionally invest in Under the Dome because the characters don’t make any sense, and the dome issue doesn’t really seem to affect them in the way that it would any real human being.

Back when I was a wee middle schooler, reading books was my THING. I did it constantly, often at the expense of pesky alternatives like “having a social life” or “participating in extracurricular activities.” But hey, knowledge is power, right? And if you needed any knowledge about young-adult fantasy or classic science-fiction, I was your guy.

Unfortunately, I had to stop being that guy once the pressures of high school and college filled my schedule with “commitments.” Now my regular reading for pleasure is confined to the summer months, when the sun is hot and the air-conditioning cool. This summer, I’ve found quite a bit of joy in getting back into the habit of reading a book regularly. I wish I had the time to keep up this habit all year-round, but it seems unlikely given the demands of my schedule. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to devour three excellent books so far, and hopefully a few more will follow in the weeks to come.

All summer long, my movie reviews have essentially amounted to a never-ending chant of “No more smashing! No more destruction! No more senseless, consequence-less violence!” Now I feel like a hypocrite, because several times during the running time of Pacific Rim, the tale of an epic clash between monster and machine, I repeatedly thought to myself, “If this gigantic action scene keeps going…I’ll be OK with it.”

So what’s the difference? Passion, for one. Director Guillermo Del Toro loves monsters in all shapes and sizes, and his obvious reverence for creature design comes through in the staggering images of the kaiju beasts that ravage the world in this movie’s vision of Earth’s very near future. The kaiju (named for the Japanese for “monster”) enter our humble planet through a fissure in the earth’s surface that serves as a portal to another, far more sinister realm. In response, the world has instituted the jaeger program, which constructs gigantic robots capable of fending off these beasts before they lay waste to the entire world, but usually not before they enact some cinematic destruction of their own. Two humans occupy each giant robot, and they’re forced to do a sort of mind meld in order to work in sync to walk and fight.

Whatever my problems with Glee, Cory Monteith was never one of them. He wasn’t the best actor, singer or dancer on the show, but his imperfections perfectly matched his character Finn Hudson, who was never the best singer or dancer in the fictional glee club. Monteith brought a decency and consistently youthful quality even as he aged further away from the character with each passing year. Finn represented the possibility of finding out that your weaknesses don’t have to matter, as long as you don’t let them.

You’re one of my favorites. I love The 20/20 Experience more than a lot of people. Anytime I want to listen to some great pop music, I turn to Justified and the revolutionary FutureSex/LoveSounds. I gobbled up your latest SNL hosting gig and your five-day stint on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in the spring, even though it was pretty nakedly a promotional gambit for your musical comeback. I even like your acting! Friends with Benefits isn’t a great movie, but your rapport with Mila Kunis makes it watchable, and your turn as Sean Parker in The Social Network is legitimately strong.

But I’m not sure I’m willing to fully support what’s going on with you these days.